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public health
WHO Warns Congo's Ebola Crisis Could Soon Become Deadliest in History
"The outbreak had a big head start, it is still way ahead of us, and we are playing catch-up," said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
Aug 12, 2026
The World Health Organization on Wednesday announced that the outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo is on pace to become the deadliest in history.
In a press conference, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the current Ebola epidemic is already the second-largest ever recorded, and "is moving faster than any previous Ebola outbreak."
"At its current pace," Tedros added, "it is on track to eclipse the West African Ebola outbreak of 2014 to 2016."
There have been more 4,400 confirmed cases and over 2,000 deaths during the current outbreak, with 80% of deaths occurring in the Ituri province in the northeastern corner of the country.
The WHO chief said he was particularly concerned that many deaths in the region are happening in communities instead of in treatment centers, which suggests there are "chains of transmission we don't know about" and need to be tracked down to contain the outbreak.
"The outbreak had a big head start," he said, "it is still way ahead of us, and we are playing catch-up."
Tedros also shared some encouraging news about the epidemic, highlighting nearly 900 Ebola patients who have recovered "even without specific therapeutics and vaccines," which he noted were still undergoing clinical trials.
"For the first time, two vaccines specifically designed against Ebola Bundibugyo virus have now entered phase one safety trials in humans," he said. "In addition, two new animal studies of the vaccine against Zaire ebolavirus—the more common species—have shown promising evidence of cross protection in animals. On that basis, WHO has recommended inclusion of the vaccine in a phase three trial, which we hope to start as soon as possible."
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America Promises Safe Schools, So Why Are Children Still Exposed to Toxic Pesticides?
Schools should be among the safest places in a child's life, not environments where unnecessary exposure to hazardous chemicals remains a possibility.
Aug 12, 2026
In 1998, my 6-year-old son walked onto his Los Angeles elementary school campus and into a preventable crisis.
A school gardener wearing a full hazardous materials suit was spraying pesticides, unaware that children were nearby. My son, unprotected, was sprayed directly in the face with a toxic pesticide. Within minutes, he struggled to breathe and suffered a severe asthma attack.
He recovered. But one question stayed with both of us: How could this happen at a school?
The contradiction was impossible to ignore: If the pesticide required an adult applicator to wear full protective equipment, why was it considered safe to use where children could be exposed?
California's experience demonstrated that schools do not have to choose between controlling pests and protecting students. They can accomplish both.
Children are not simply smaller adults. Pound for pound, they breathe more air; consume more food and water; and their brains, lungs, immune systems, and endocrine systems are still developing. These differences make them uniquely vulnerable to environmental chemicals. Research has linked exposure to certain pesticides with asthma, learning and developmental problems, neurological effects, endocrine disruption, and other long-term health concerns. Children cannot choose where they spend their days, nor can they protect themselves from environmental hazards created by adults. That responsibility belongs to us.
My son's exposure changed the course of my life. It led me to establish California Safe Schools, a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting children from harmful environmental exposures. I worked with parents, educators, physicians, scientists, and school officials to create the groundbreaking Los Angeles Unified School District Integrated Pest Management Policy, one of the first of its kind in the nation. Rather than relying on routine pesticide spraying, the policy embraced the Precautionary Principle: When there is credible evidence that a chemical may harm children's health, schools should take preventive action even if every scientific question has not yet been answered. Simply put, children's health should come before convenience.
The policy also established the public's Right to Know, recognizing that parents, teachers, and school employees deserve timely information about pesticides used on school campuses. Families cannot make informed decisions or advocate for their children's health if they are unaware of when or what pesticides are being applied. Transparency became a cornerstone of protecting students.
The Los Angeles policy became a model for California and helped pave the way for the Healthy Schools Act of 2000, which required schools to notify parents and staff before pesticide applications, maintain records of pesticide use, and encourage schools to adopt Integrated Pest Management practices that emphasize prevention and least-toxic pest control methods.
California strengthened these protections even further with AB 405, authored by Assemblymember Cindy Montañez (D-39), sponsored by California Safe Schools, and signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwartzenegger in 2005.The law prohibited the use on school sites of experimental pesticides, pesticides under conditional registration that had not completed all required health and environmental testing, and pesticides that the US Environmental Protection Agency was phasing out because of health or environmental concerns. The legislation recognized a simple but important principle: Children should never be exposed at school to pesticides that have not been fully evaluated for safety or that regulators have already determined should be removed from use. AB 405 closed important gaps in school pesticide protections and reinforced California's commitment to putting children's health first and protecting more than 6 million students, teachers, and staff.
Over the past 28 years, California Safe Schools has continued to work with parents, educators, students, scientists, physicians, school officials, and policymakers to advocate for safer school environments. One lesson has remained constant: Pesticide exposure in schools is almost always preventable.
Pesticides are designed to kill living organisms. While they target insects, weeds, fungi, and rodents, many also pose risks to human health. The question has never been whether schools should control pests. They should. The real question is how they do it.
For decades, many schools relied on routine pesticide spraying as the first line of defense. Yet experts have long recognized that safer, more effective approaches exist. Integrated Pest Management, or IPM, focuses first on prevention by eliminating the conditions that allow pests to thrive. Better sanitation, sealing cracks and openings, repairing leaks, improving waste management, and monitoring pest activity often reduce or eliminate the need for chemical pesticides. When pesticides are necessary, IPM emphasizes choosing the least hazardous products and applying them only when children are not present or when they could reasonably be exposed.
California's experience demonstrated that schools do not have to choose between controlling pests and protecting students. They can accomplish both.
Unfortunately, protections remain uneven across the United States. While some states and school districts have adopted strong Integrated Pest Management programs, others continue to rely heavily on pesticide applications with fewer safeguards. Parents may receive little or no advance notice before pesticides are used, and school staff may lack training in safer pest management practices. As a result, children's protection often depends on where they live rather than on a consistent national standard.
This is particularly troubling because children spend approximately 1,000 hours each year at school. Schools should be among the safest places in a child's life, not environments where unnecessary exposure to hazardous chemicals remains a possibility.
The good news is that we already know what works.
Integrated Pest Management has been successfully implemented in thousands of schools across the country. It reduces pesticide use while maintaining effective pest control, often lowering long-term maintenance costs by addressing the underlying causes of infestations rather than repeatedly treating the symptoms. Prevention is not only safer; it is also smarter.
Every school district should adopt comprehensive Integrated Pest Management policies that prioritize prevention, maintenance, monitoring, and least-toxic methods before chemical pesticides are considered. Hazardous pesticides should never be applied when children are present or could reasonably be exposed. Parents, teachers, and school employees should receive timely notification before any pesticide application so they can make informed decisions. School personnel and pest management professionals should receive ongoing training to ensure these policies are implemented consistently and effectively.
Most importantly, policymakers should recognize that children's health deserves a precautionary approach. When credible scientific evidence suggests a pesticide may pose a risk to children, protecting them should not depend on waiting years for absolute certainty while exposures continue. Prevention should always come before regret.
Nearly three decades after my son's exposure, we should still think about the question that was asked that day: Could it happen again?
The answer should be no.
No parent should have to wonder whether their child will be exposed to toxic pesticides during the school day. No child should suffer an asthma attack or another preventable health consequence because adults failed to take reasonable precautions.
We have the knowledge. We have safer alternatives. We have decades of successful experience showing that schools can manage pests without unnecessarily exposing children to hazardous chemicals.
The remaining question is whether we have the will to make those protections the standard in every school across America.
A safe school environment should never be left to chance. It should begin with a simple promise: No child should be placed in harm's way by preventable pesticide exposure.
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Yale Study: Medicare for All Would Save Over 114,000 Lives and $1 Trillion a Year
"Do not tell me we cannot afford Medicare for All," said Sen. Bernie Sanders. "What we cannot afford is a broken healthcare system based on greed."
Aug 11, 2026
Previous research has shown that shifting the United States to a Medicare for All system could save roughly 68,000 lives and $650 billion per year, but a new study by experts at Yale University suggests the savings would likely be even greater on both fronts.
In a Tuesday statement, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), lead sponsor of the Medicare for All Act in the Senate, highlighted the findings, published recently on medRxiv, a server for preprints, or research that hasn't yet been peer reviewed.
"The US spends more on healthcare than any other nation, yet tens of millions of Americans are uninsured or underinsured, and coverage retractions enacted in 2025 are widening these gaps," the five experts wrote.
Upward of 15 million Americans could lose health insurance coverage over the next decade because of Medicaid cuts in President Donald Trump's so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act and the Republican-led Congress' failure to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies that expired at the end of last year.
"The misalignment between the for-profit insurance architecture and optimal patient care, together with the inefficiencies of a fragmented system, contributes to both unnecessary costs and preventable mortality," according to the Yale researchers. "We update our previous analyses with the most recent data to project the economic benefits and the number of lives saved that would be achieved by single-payer universal coverage, as proposed in the Medicare for All Act."
"We estimate that such a system would reduce national health expenditure by $1,041 billion annually," they explained. "Sources of savings include reductions in administrative overhead, pharmaceutical prices, fraudulent billing, and avoidable emergency care. Combined with the reversal of recent retractions, universal coverage would save over 114,000 lives annually."
Specifically, as Sanders' office detailed in a statement, Americans would save:
- $377.5 billion by paying no more than other major countries for prescription drugs;
- $286.3 billion by eliminating bureaucracy and waste;
- $285.7 billion by curbing fraudulent billing;
- $100 billion by preventing costly emergency room and hospital visits; and
- $295.6 billion by reimbursing providers fairly for the care they provide.
Welcoming the findings, the senator declared that "this study confirms what we have known for years: Medicare for All saves lives and saves money. In fact, guaranteeing healthcare as a human right through a Medicare for All, single-payer system would cost $1 trillion less than our current dysfunctional system."
"It would save working families thousands of dollars a year. And it would prevent over 100,000 Americans from dying unnecessarily each and every year because they cannot make it to a doctor in time," he stressed. "At a time when 15 million Americans are being thrown off the healthcare they have and 20 million Americans have already seen their premiums double, on average, as a result of Trump's so-called 'Big Beautiful Bill,' we need Medicare for All now more than ever."
"The time is now to end the greed of the big insurance and drug companies and pass Medicare for All," he added.
The research comes as Americans face high prices for not only healthcare but also food, gasoline, housing, and more under President Donald Trump and the GOP-led Congress. It also comes amid a renewed push by hundreds of advocacy groups that support Medicare for All and a wave of victories by progressive candidates who support the policy.
Among them is former Detroit health official Abdul El-Sayed, who won the Democratic primary for US Senate in Michigan last week having campaigned on a promise to prioritize "money out of politics, money in your pocket, and Medicare for All." His victory followed those of various other candidates, from Colorado to New York and Pennsylvania.
However, it's not just elected Republicans standing the way of a transition to universal healthcare in the United States. As a Monday analysis from the investigative outlet Sludge shows, the health insurance industry is pouring money into Third Way, a think tank reportedly preparing to spend $15 million combating the rise of candidates who support progressive policies including Medicare for All.
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Trump Order Rooted in Debunked Vaccine-Autism Link 'Will Get Kids Killed,' Warns Critic
Protect Our Care called the president's decree on the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine "a wildly dangerous escalation of the administration’s deadly anti-vax agenda."
Aug 10, 2026
US President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order overhauling federal childhood vaccine recommendations, reviving a discredited theory that vaccines may contribute to autism and prompting condemnation from public health advocates and even rebuke from a Republican senator.
Trump's order, “Delivering Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations for Americans,” calls for separating the combined measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccination into three individual shots "once such products are domestically available." The directive also recommends administering childhood immunizations during separate medical visits, "to the maximum extent feasible."
At a press conference, Trump explained that the recommendations in his order concern "many subjects, but including autism in particular."
"Decades ago, children received only a small fraction of the vaccines required today," the president said. "In those times, people were much healthier and, of course, the high rates of autism now observed did not exist. So, there's a reason for such epidemic rates of autism. And we're going to bring it back to much closer to where it was."
"While we do not know exactly what the cause is with respect to autism, it is essential to our research efforts that we have the very best vaccine recommendations in the entire world," he added. "So we're reducing them, we're changing it to visits over the period of a year, a year and a half, so they get 20% of what they would have gotten in one big shot."
Decades of rigorous research have failed to produce any credible scientific link between vaccines and autism. That has not stopped influential figures, including Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., from claiming such a link. Trump and Kennedy also alarmed experts by claiming last year that acetaminophen, commonly known by the brand name Tylenol, is linked to autism spectrum disorders in developing fetuses when taken during pregnancy.
While anti-vaccine and vaccine skeptic voices applauded Trump’s order, public health experts said the directive will prove deadly.
Trump also claimed that inoculating children with all three components of the MMR vaccine could possibly be "quite lethal," but when asked by a reporter for evidence supporting that claim, the president could offer none.
I put together these two parts of Trump’s event on vaccines.
Trump claims there is a possibility that the MMR vaccine could be “quite lethal.” But later, when asked if he has any evidence to back up his claims, he says no pic.twitter.com/AwuW9IiYNl
— Acyn (@Acyn) August 10, 2026
The Affordable Care Act advocacy group Protect Our Care warned that Trump's executive order on the "nonexistent autism-vaccine link will get kids killed" and "is a wildly dangerous escalation of the administration’s deadly anti-vax agenda."
“Pushing parents to spread out these lifesaving vaccines over time is guaranteed to increase kids’ exposure to these very harmful diseases, including the simple reality that follow-up appointments will be missed," Protect Our Care senior adviserc Anne Shoup said in a statement. "If Trump’s baseless, science-free decree is followed, the end result will not be fewer children with autism, but far more in the ER or even the morgue."
"Whether or not state health departments follow Trump’s ignorant guidance, this official proclamation from the highest level of power will have a further chilling effect on vaccination rates across the board," Shoup added. "All Trump is doing is fanning more unfounded fear, pressuring a further drop in vaccination rates, and welcoming a resurgence of preventable diseases once thought eradicated. For the anti-vaxxer-in-chief, the current record-breaking measles crisis is apparently not on a grand enough scale.”
Anthony Wright, executive director at the health advocacy group Families USA, said in a statement that “today, the president announced yet another change in vaccine policy that is not based on science or medical evidence."
"The science has not changed. Vaccines that prevent common illnesses like rotavirus, hepatitis B, and the flu are just as safe and effective today as they were yesterday," he continued. "The new policy will simply create chaos and confusion for patients and providers, and increase costs for families when getting their kids vaccinated."
"This executive order seeks to sidestep the established panel of experts entirely, replacing decades of bipartisan, public, evidence-based review with the whims of a rogue White House and HHS secretary," Wright said. "This new directive sabotages a science-based process that has successfully prevented widespread outbreaks among American children for generations."
“Downgrading the universal recommendation for common, lifesaving vaccines will cause confusion for parents and providers alike, and confusion costs lives," he added. "Removing the presumption that every child should receive them isn't just dangerous; it risks undermining the guarantee that recommended vaccines are covered without cost-sharing, forcing families to choose between protecting their kids and paying for an expensive doctor's visit."
Dr. Robert Steinbrook, health research group director at the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said that "the Trump administration is continuing a mindless anti-scientific assault on the childhood vaccine schedule and falsely tying vaccines to autism."
"There is no medical reason for the MMR vaccine to be split into three separate single-disease shots that would be administered at separate office visits, changes that would only decrease vaccine coverage and increase healthcare costs," he continued. "Under the draft executive order, mandatory vaccine requirements for children to attend school would be also put at further risk. These and other directives are the exact opposite of ‘Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations’ during the worst year for measles cases in decades."
The resurgence in measles is directly linked to vaccine refusal and hesitancy stoked by influential figures and fora like Kennedy and the Children's Health Defense nonprofit group he formerly chaired.
Trump will sign an executive order proposing reducing childhood vaccines, and separating the MMR vaccine into 3 individual shots.This reckless move will decrease vaccine uptake further at a time where measles cases are at a 35-year high, and the US is set to lose its measles elimination status.
— Dr. Lucky Tran (@luckytran.com) August 10, 2026 at 12:24 PM
“Senate confirmation of Dr. Erica Schwartz as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) should have restored sanity to the federal government’s vaccine policies," Steinbrook added. "Regrettably, within days of Schwartz’s confirmation, the Trump administration has offered only more irrational nonsense.”
Trump and Kennedy have pursued a broad rollback of federal vaccine policy, including by purging the CDC's entire vaccine advisory committee and replacing its members with controversial figures; reducing or eliminating universal recommendations for several vaccines, including Covid-19, flu, hepatitis B, and some childhood vaccines; canceling hundreds of millions of dollars in mRNA-vaccine development funding; and pushing individual decision-making.
Physicians serving in Congress from both parties also decried Trump's order.
“Donald Trump and RFK Jr. have gambled with American lives and seem determined to turn the clock back on decades of medical and scientific progress," said Congresswoman Kelly Morrison (D-Minn.), an OB-GYN. "Communities across the country continue to face outbreaks of preventable diseases, and Trump and RFK Jr. are doubling down on their dangerous disinformation."
"Meanwhile, working families continue to see their healthcare and prescription drug costs skyrocket—all so Trump can pay for tax handouts for billionaires," she added, referring to the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill signed by the president in July 2025. "Families shouldn’t have to worry that Trump and RFK Jr. will stand in the way of protecting themselves and their loved ones from serious illnesses.”
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a gastroenterologist who voted to confirm Kennedy, wrote on X: "I’m a doctor. This executive order is wrong. The president does not have the expertise to make these changes."
"Vaccines are overwhelmingly safe. Vaccines are effective. Vaccines DO NOT cause autism," he continued. "Breaking up vaccines will mean children have to get more shots to get the same protection, not fewer shots. It will increase hesitancy and make children less safe."
"Parents should listen to their child’s pediatrician about vaccines rather than listening to an inaccurate executive order," Cassidy added. "This is so wrong."
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The Farm Bill Is a Health Bill
It cannot be cut into pieces without harming land and people.
Aug 09, 2026
Wanìshi means thank you in the Lenape language. This is the lyrical word we recently had the privilege of learning from a principal emissary from the Piscataway Indian Nation, and experiencing together. Wanìshi for the quiet moments between hard conversations and watching sunsets, where we shared in the spirit of collaboration, together with 18 other thinkers and doers who are deeply troubled by the trajectory of public agriculture policy, and its historically principal vehicle, the Farm Bill.
We embraced and shared in this collaborative mindset over the three days we spent with the America the Beautiful for All Coalition’s Legacy Lands workgroup in Maryland. The Farm Bill was one of the issues we discussed. A bill currently being treated by politicians as technical, as boring, as someone else's problem. When in our realities, it is none of those things. The Farm Bill decides who eats and who doesn't. It decides who is healthy and whose health is negotiable.
Between us, we have spent a combined five decades serving the communities this bill affects: rural families losing food, farmworkers losing protections, Black farmers losing land, tribal nations losing voice. So at that convening, and with this piece, we are expressing plainly a reality every farmer, rancher, and all of us who steward land intimately know. That land is a body and must be nourished. That we cannot cut it into fundable pieces and expect the pieces to bleed separately. The Farm Bill is a health bill. It cannot be cut into pieces without harming land and people. We do not view the content of the draft as a public health crisis because we have been trained to view it as agricultural policy. But it is, in fact, a public health crisis, and that crisis has a physical address: every community where conservation funding has been cut and every family living downstream of the farms and lands that lost it.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed on the Fourth of July last year, cut $187 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). More than 4.5 million people have lost their food assistance since then. In rural counties where the nearest grocery store is a 40-minute drive and the nearest doctor is farther, losing SNAP is not a policy change. It is a sentence. It means a child eating less, and then eating worse, and then showing up in an emergency room that is itself understaffed and underfunded. The Senate Farm Bill draft does not restore a single dollar.
That land is a body and must be nourished. That we cannot cut it into fundable pieces and expect the pieces to bleed separately. The Farm Bill is a health bill. It cannot be cut into pieces without harming land and people.
Both versions of the new bill cut funding for the conservation programs that keep farmland productive and water clean. The Senate draft alone slashes nearly $2 billion from EQIP, the program that helps small farmers put cover crops in, manage nutrients, and protect water. When those programs shrink, the runoff increases. Babies, adults, pets, and wildlife in the communities downstream all drink that water.
The agency responsible for delivering conservation to farmers is disappearing. The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) lost nearly a quarter of its staff in one year. One hundred and forty-one counties went from having NRCS employees to having none. These were the people who helped farmers manage nutrients, reduce fertilizer runoff, and protect water. In their absence, nitrate from agricultural runoff enters rural drinking water unchecked. Research links nitrate contamination to colorectal cancer, thyroid disease, and birth defects in newborns, at levels below what the Environmental Protection Agency considers safe. The communities drinking that water are the same small rural towns that just lost their NRCS offices. A beginning farmer in southern Georgia or a small rancher in northern New Mexico picks up the phone and no one answers. Their neighbors downstream drink what runs off the fields no one is helping them manage.
For Latino communities across the rural West, acequias, the community irrigation systems that have sustained families for centuries, depend on the conservation programs this bill is cutting. A farmer in the San Luis Valley who has irrigated land the way her family has for six generations does not experience a conservation cut as a line item. She experiences it as a ditch that doesn't flow, a garden that doesn't grow, a family that buys what it used to harvest.
Black families once farmed 16 million acres in this country. Today they hold barely over 1%. Heirs' property, land passed down without clear title, is one of the mechanisms through which that loss continues: A single partition sale can erase a century of family ownership in an afternoon. The families who lose their land don't just lose wealth. They lose the foundation for food sovereignty, the one asset that could have fed a family, a neighborhood, a generation. A deed problem becomes a health problem, passed down the same way the land was supposed to be.
As we watch this Farm Bill, we carry with us the word our Piscataway colleague shared. Wanìshi. Thank you. We offer it now in the spirit of collaboration.
We will offer it again, in the spirit of gratitude, when Congress writes this bill for all of us.
We are waiting.
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Scientists Sound Alarm on AI-Generated Biological Viruses Amid Unregulated Industry
"The ability to compose viral genomes using generative AI now exists; the governance to safely steer it does not," a pair of researchers said.
Aug 06, 2026
As scientists confirmed the first-ever biological viruses generated by artificial intelligence, experts warned Thursday that governments have failed to keep pace with a rapidly advancing and largely unregulated technology that, while having tremendous potential for medical breakthroughs, could also pose existential threats to humanity in the foreseeable future.
Research published Thursday in Science, available in full only to subscribers, describes how scientists at Stanford University and the Arc Institute used a genome language model, roughly the genetic equivalent of the technology behind AI chatbots, to generate hundreds of novel bacteriophage genomes—viruses that infect bacteria rather than humans. After synthesizing and testing the AI-generated designs, researchers found that 16 functioned successfully in laboratory experiments, infecting and killing E. coli.
While the researchers said that the new viruses pose no danger to humans because they only infect bacteria, experts have warned of the risks of AI creating novel bioweapons—either prompted by scientists or, in a future when superintelligent AI is achieved, independently—that could, in a worst-case scenario, threaten the existence of humanity.
"Although this is promising for life sciences applications, it also raises urgent biosafety and biosecurity questions," Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health Center for Health Security researchers Thomas Inglesby and Moritz Hanke wrote in a related article, also published Thursday in Science behind a paywall. "The ability to compose viral genomes using generative AI now exists; the governance to safely steer it does not."
The Stanford and Arc Institute study authors themselves noted the “important biosafety, biocontainment, and biosecurity considerations” accompanying such advances, urging researchers to “consult both safety and security professionals" during their work.
Calls for more robust regulatory guardrails have mounted in recent weeks amid revelations that one of ChatGPT maker OpenAI's models autonomously broke into the systems of other companies during testing. As AI advances to the point where it will likely outsmart humans, the challenge of ensuring that advanced systems reliably pursue goals that match what humans actually want—known as alignment—becomes increasingly difficult and, experts say, dangerous.
A misaligned, superintelligence could take uncontrolled autonomous actions at massive scale to achieve its goals, with industry pioneers warning of potentially catastrophic outcomes like AI-launched nuclear war or bioattack with existing or AI-generated pathogens.
While advocacy groups, the United Nations, and dozens of national governments are urging more robust regulation of AI development, the United States under President Donald Trump, the Republican-controlled Congress, and Big Tech’s army of lobbyists is strongly opposed to guardrails.
In fact, Trump—who Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Greg Casar (D-Texas) on Monday accused of being "too busy cashing in" on AI—has rolled back regulations, including some meager steps taken during the Biden administration to bolster safety.
“There’s just a huge disconnect," Hanke told The New York Times on Thursday.
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GOP Senate Shit Show: Focusing on Fauci Instead of Cyclospora Diarrhea Disaster
GOP lawmakers would rather relitigate the pandemic than have public attention focused on the epidemic happening on Trump's watch.
Aug 06, 2026
It has taken the Trump administration just eighteen months to turn a seasonal stomach bug into a national epidemic.
Cyclospora, the food borne parasite that causes severe diarrhea, has infected an estimated 18,000 Americans so far this summer—more than six times the number of cases the U.S. typically experiences over a full year.
This surge in case counts represents the largest recorded outbreak of Cyclosporiasis in U.S. history. As of writing, it has led to more than 400 hospitalizations across 45 states. Worse still, Michigan recorded its first two Cyclospora-related deaths earlier this week.
With all this in mind, it makes sense that the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee recently spent nearly three hours grilling a health official over their response to a disease outbreak…
…until you realize that the topic of discussion was COVID-19 rather than Cyclosporiasis.
On July 29, Congressional Republicans called an oversight hearing to do something they’ve done many times before: ask Dr. Anthony Fauci to explain, once again, where COVID-19 came from.
These COVID-origins hearings have now run for years, generated multiple staff reports from both parties, and reliably produce the same result:
- Republicans accuse Fauci of a cover-up,
- Fauci denies,
- Democrats call the exercise theater,
- Everyone goes home having learned nothing they didn’t already believe going in.
This most recent hearing was no different. Chairman Rand Paul (R-KY) subpoenaed Fauci and the 85-year-old retired scientist, more than three years removed from federal service, declined to answer questions. The only notable part about this go-round was that Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment right more than a hundred times to avoid responding.
On Thursday, the committee voted—along strict party lines—to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress over his recent testimony.
COVID-19 origin hearings have established themselves a predictable, low-yield use of oversight capacity. That makes it worth asking: why are Republicans calling attention to the issue now?
Oversight hearings involve real and finite resources including a Senate committee’s subpoena power, its staff’s investigative time, and a chair’s agenda-setting authority. To have that congressional attention wasted on an issue both sides have already litigated to exhaustion is revealing—especially when juxtaposed with the fact that not a single Republican has subpoenaed anyone over a historic outbreak that continues to spread with no real end in sight.
The Food and Drug Administration’s current acting commissioner Kyle Diamantas could have easily replaced Fauci in the hot seat. Not just for the agency’s failure to adequately communicate with the public about their cyclospora investigations, but also for his professional history as “corporate lawyer that defended Abbott Laboratories in 2022 for its key role in creating an infant formula crisis.” That’s the same Abbott responsible for the contaminated baby formula that spawned a multiyear criminal investigation by the Department of Justice, which has since been dropped despite having yielded, per the DOJ’s own prosecutors, enough evidence to support criminal charges. According to the Wall Street Journal, that call was made by the DOJ’s “top decision makers,” which in all likelihood included the man the GOP plans to confirm as the country’s top lawyer: Todd Blanche.
White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought—and his former Department of Government Efficiency co-lead Elon Musk—could have similarly been forced to answer questions about how their brand of “efficiency” has hollowed out federal, state, and local health departments charged with monitoring viral threats and inspecting food facilities. Do the American people not deserve to know that thanks to these cuts, there’s a thousand fewer people overseeing our food supply to ensure instances of cyclosporiasis don’t become widespread outbreaks? Or that the principal national office with cyclospora expertise was dismantled during Musk and Vought’s campaign?
There are ample administration officials to place in the hot seat, but the list of culpable targets extends even further. Taylor Farms’ surreptitious handling of this ongoing tragedy is obviously deserving of microscopic inquiry. People all over the country will not look too fondly on the summer they were forced to eschew their bright salads out of fear of becoming too well acquainted with their bathrooms. But Rand Paul & co. evidently have no desire to satisfy the public’s itch for accountability since Taylor Farms’ CEO Bruce Taylor continues to sit easy even as Americans die. A grim reminder of the privileges that political donations have secured under Trump.
The precedent for achieving this sort of accountability was already set by House Democrats. Two days prior to the Fauci hearing, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA)—the Ranking Member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform—demanded Bruce Taylor answer questions about his (company’s) role in this outbreak.
Neither the ongoing cyclospora outbreak, nor the next manufactured health emergency under Trump, will be solved by another round of questions for a Biden-era retiree. But Republicans aren’t looking for solutions, they’re looking to shift blame for—and from—a shit-show of their own making.
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'All Hands on Deck': UN Urges Expanded Response as DRC Ebola Outbreak Spreads at Record Pace
"We need to massively step up our response," said one senior UN official, while another stressed that "Ebola feeds on delay, fear, and hunger."
Jul 31, 2026
As the official death toll from the Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo topped 1,500, United Nations officials called for a dramatic expansion of humanitarian assistance to combat what's now the fastest-spreading outbreak of the deadly disease ever recorded.
The DRC's Health Ministry on Friday confirmed more than 3,400 infections and at least 1,556 deaths since the outbreak was declared in May. The ministry said the fatality rate during the current epidemic is 44%.
The epidemic is caused by the rare Bundibugyo strain of the Ebola virus, which has spread across multiple DRC provinces, with the vast majority of cases concentrated in Ituri Province. Unlike the Zaire strain from previous outbreaks, there is currently no approved vaccine or treatment for the Bundibugyo virus.
The current epidemic has killed more people faster than any previous outbreak, including in 2014-16, when more than 28,000 infections and over 11,000 deaths were reported.
"In the last 24 hours, 50 people have died of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the number of cases is growing exponentially, doubling every 20 days,” senior United Nations aiEbola coordinator Julien Harneis said during a Wednesday press conference in New York.
“So, in support of the government, I'm calling that we step up, across the response, the United Nations, nongovernmental organizations, member states,” Harneis continued. "We need to massively step up our response, be it in terms of supplies, specialized supplies like personal protective equipment, staff, specialized medical staff, and logistics as well.”
Harneis spoke at the press conference with acting UN World Food Program Executive Director Carl Skau, who said that "Ebola feeds on delay, fear, and hunger."
“Stopping this outbreak requires all hands on deck and communities at the center," he continued. "Food assistance is frontline Ebola containment. It helps families stay home, supports safe isolation, builds trust with communities, and keeps health teams moving. We know what works; what we need now is the speed and resources to scale it before this outbreak outruns the response.”
Skau noted that around 10 million people are suffering from acute food insecurity in the eastern DRC, with 3 million of those in an Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC)-designated "emergency"—one step away from famine.
“You cannot force people to choose between hunger and health,” he said.
Compounding the crisis, a growing number of Ebola patients are dying outside of treatment centers. Officials said that more than 60% of recent Ebola deaths have occurred in communities, increasing the risk of further transmission through unsafe caregiving and burial practices.
Health workers also continue to endure attacks by armed groups, which have forced aid organizations to suspend operations in some of the hardest-hit areas of the epidemic.
Some experts also pointed to US President Donald Trump’s ideologically driven decision to withdraw the US from the World Health Organization, his administration’s dismantling of the US Agency for International Development, and reduced funding for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s global public health efforts as adversely affecting the response to the current Ebola epidemic, especially when compared with outbreaks in 2014 and 2019.
Meanwhile, health officials in neighboring Uganda this week declared an end to the country's Bundibugyo outbreak after no new cases were reported for a month. Twenty people were infected, and three died, in Uganda.
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Critics Warn US Bilateral Health Deals With African Nations Threaten Pandemic Equity Efforts
“Trump is exploiting African states’ urgent need to restore lifesaving health aid," said one campaigner.
Jul 30, 2026
US Department of State text messages detailing health agreements between the Trump administration and African nations have sparked fresh alarm among public health advocates, who warn that the coercive deals could allow the United States to secure access to virus samples and valuable data while failing to guarantee that countries providing them will receive vaccines, treatments, and other benefits in return.
Public Citizen said Thursday that it had analyzed documents concerning the Trump administration's terms for sharing pathogen data in health agreements with African nations. The consumer advocacy group described these terms as "unfair" and said that they threaten "to undermine the core equity bargain of the [World Health Organization's] Pandemic Agreement negotiations."
The conditions of the proposed deals, said Public Citizen, "would require African states to share viral samples and pathogen information with the US and allow the US to share that information with drugmakers, but provide no credible expectation of benefits in return or access to medical tools developed from those samples."
"This undercuts the federated proposal for viral sharing with access benefits put forward this month at WHO negotiations by the Africa+ Group, which includes all countries for which bilateral specimen agreements are available," Public Citizen added.
At the center of the controversy are agreements that tie US health assistance—which has been eviscerated by the Trump administration with widespread deadly consequences—to commitments involving disease surveillance, data sharing, and, in some cases, the exchange of pathogen samples.
Supporters argue the deals strengthen America's ability to detect and respond to emerging infectious diseases while providing partner countries with much-needed funding after devastating cuts to US aid. Public health advocates, however, contend the agreements shift power away from multilateral institutions and toward one-on-one negotiations in which lower-income countries have less leverage against the world's wealthiest and most powerful nation.
As Common Dreams reported last month, President Donald Trump's so-called “America First” approach to global health strategy is characterized by transactional agreements with African governments to restore some funding. Human rights advocates have raised concerns about the possibly coercive nature of this strategy.
“Trump is exploiting African states’ urgent need to restore lifesaving health aid and pushing them to give up a shot at real lifesaving medical access and equity, for which so many people have worked, bled, and died,” Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen's Access to Medicines program, said Thursday in a statement. "African states at WHO have led the way in efforts to secure a fair deal and cooperation to fight pandemics, but individually, these states are vulnerable to Trump’s threats.”
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How to Celebrate Medicare's 61st Birthday? Expand It to Everyone
Medicare has become living proof that public, universal health insurance is superior to private insurance in every way.
Jul 30, 2026
Sixty one years ago, July 30, 1965, Congress enacted Medicare to provide health insurance for people ages 65 and older and the disabled regardless of income or medical history. At the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library in Independence, Missouri, former President Harry S. Truman and his wife, former First Lady Bess Truman, became the first recipients of the new Medicare health insurance program. President Lyndon Johnson and the US Congress enacted Medicare under Title XVIII of the Social Security Act.
Medicare was a momentous act because it provided new health insurance for people ages 65 and older and the disabled regardless of income or medical history. In the years since, Medicare has become living proof that public, universal health insurance is superior to private insurance in every way. Medicare is more efficient than private health insurance and is administered at a cost of 3-4%, as opposed to private, for-profit health insurance, which has administrative costs above 15%.
Following the successful 1965 grassroots campaign to enact Medicare, many also believed that the dream of a full national, single-payer health insurance system that included all age groups, “Medicare for All,” was right around the corner. Unfortunately decades later, Medicare still has not been expanded. Most of the changes have been contractions with higher out-of-pocket costs for beneficiaries and repeated attempts at privatization by Big Pharma, Big health insurance industry companies-oligarchs-profiteers, and their champions in the White House and Congress.
Big insurance and Big Pharma continue opposing legislation for the new, improved Medicare for All because these resistant, self-serving industries have the most to lose if their huge profits are redirected to direct patient care for all. Individual and corporate predators regard democracy, government, and community as obstacles to their greed and avarice, always placing profits over individual patients, families, and public health. It’s no wonder so many beholden members of Congress want to protect the interests of Big Insurance and Big Pharma, industries that spent $371 million on lobbying in 2017 alone.
The Big Health Insurance-Big Pharma-Congressional Profiteering Complex
The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, framed by former Trump administration staffers and secretly endorsed by President Donald Trump himself, proposes changes in Medicare benefits that could destroy Medicare as we know it. Instead, we must fight back and expand Medicare. Although health insurance affordability for the majority of US citizens still remains elusive, President Trump’s health insurance plan still wants to shift many more dollars into private, Wall Street insurance industry hands. The takeover of public health insurance, as with Medicare Advantage plans and others, by private Wall Street entities continues apace as Republicans and Trump propose to increase taxes and give it to the private profit insurance industry—the basic source of our profound administrative waste, along with the costly administrative burdens they place on the delivery system that requires large profits. Profiteering continues unabated as private insurance sells us services we don’t need or want, such as deductibles and other cost sharing and maintenance of narrow networks, requiring prior authorization with increased administrative costs, excessive ongoing paperwork, and documentation requirements, all while avoiding paying for surprise bills and other denied benefits.
No greater disconnect exists between the public good and private interests than in the voracious US system of for-profit Big Insurance and Big Pharma.
Dealing with Covid-19 could have been more lifesaving if Medicare for All had been in place. A New York Times editorial, "Health Care for Some is a Recipe for Disaster," stresses the importance of covering everyone. Even before Covid-19 was known to humans, Northeastern University professor of public health, Wendy Parmet, presciently warned that the push to exclude immigrants from access to healthcare services would be both dangerous and quixotic. “None of us can be self-sufficient in the face of a widespread epidemic,” she wrote in 2018. “That is just as true for noncitizen immigrants as everyone.” In any pandemic, self-sufficiency can be self-deluding; everyone’s health, citizens, immigrants, etc. alike is only as good as our most vulnerable neighbor’s.
Truly a recipe for disaster, vested interests reject the science of public health epidemiology by asserting that only a slow, incremental approach to health insurance reform is possible or acceptable. So, what are we willing to settle for, should we just settle for what we can get? Lower the expectations, turn down the public heat, and keep waiting?. Gradualism, baby steps, extending health insurance coverage to some, but not all, is the mantra of the day; "Medicare for Some," but not "Medicare for All," is fawned over by politicians, profiteers, and advocacy groups alike while reducing communities resources to deal with dangerous epidemics and other health problems.
Virtually all the risky gradual reforms being touted would reinforce a dysfunctional health insurance system with as many standards of insurance as there are dollars to purchase them. It would further lock us into an obsolete private insurance-based model that holds everyone's health hostage to profiteering HMOs and unaccountable big insurance companies for years to come. For these proponents of political expediency, the question remains: Who will be left behind while we wait? Every year many unnecessary deaths are linked to lack of health insurance coverage. Pandemics can quickly increase these numbers.
Big Insurance and Big Pharma dominate our government, and public health takes a back seat to the need for private profit. Many government leaders from both political parties share the same "profits over public health" ideology, even though the Covid-19 pandemic clearly showed how our economic system failed to serve our citizens by allowing these groups to privatize, sabotage, fragment, and cripple our health, public health, and other social services. Many of the changes in traditional Medicare have been contractions with higher out-of-pocket costs for beneficiaries and repeated attempts at privatization by Big Pharma, and Big Health insurance. No greater disconnect exists between the public good and private interests than in the voracious US system of for-profit Big Insurance and Big Pharma and their inherent tendency to invent new needs, disregard all boundaries, and turn everything into an object for sale and big profit.
Medicare for All 2026 Meets Eight High Standards
Medicare for All Act (M4A)-2026 is best solution because it meets eight basic standards:
- Health insurance coverage should be stable and permanent throughout life. M4A-2026 would be a single program—permanent throughout life.
- Employer-sponsored insurance can create problems such as job lock, which many conservatives and progressives believe should be terminated. M4A-2026 would end employer-sponsored insurance, and, for most, M4A-2026 would be better.
- Medicaid carries the stigma of being a welfare program which results in legislative underfunding and neglect. M4A-2026 would fully terminate the Medicaid program and move everyone into a universal, comprehensive, and equitable program.
- We need a program that is affordable for each individual and for society as a whole. M4A-2026 would achieve all goals of financing reform without significantly increasing spending.
- Patients should have free choice of their professionals and healthcare institutions. M4A-2026 allows choices within the entire healthcare system.
- The privatization of public programs such as Medicare through Medicare Advantage and Medicaid through private managed care programs have proven to provide poor value for the taxpayer (obscured by cherry-picking and lemon dropping) and should be eliminated. M4A-2026 would eliminate them.
- Fragmentation results in dysfunctional financing of healthcare; M4A-2026 would bring an end to it.
- M4A-2026 is specifically designed to greatly reduce fragmentation and its associated costs; health insurance industry profiteering is ended.
Summary
To continue our 61 years of progress, it’s time to upgrade Medicare by establishing a 21st century improved “Medicare for All” health insurance system that covers all age groups, cradle to grave. Newborns will leave the hospital with their new Medicare card, and drop it off years later at life’s end. Two comprehensive M4A bills now filed in Congress, H.R. 3069 and S.1506, propose to insure or cover all medically necessary services. Patients have their choice of physicians, mental health professionals, other healthcare professionals, hospitals, and clinics.
M4A insured health services include:- Primary care
- Medically approved diet and nutrition services
- Inpatient care
- Outpatient care
- Emergency care
- Prescription drugs
- Long-term care and palliative care
- Mental health services
- Dentistry
- Eye care
- Substance abuse treatment
Because our government, instead of private profit health insurance companies, serves us as the health insurance financing authority, co-pays and deductibles paid at health professionals' offices are ended because payment for health insurance is fully prepaid directly into Medicare, much like Social Security, and covered at first dollar amounts. This means the obsolete 80%-20% payment split between private health insurance companies and Medicare is eliminated, with Medicare for All covering 100%.
The major reason private health insurers are more expensive than government health programs in the US is due to profiteering and administrative costs. Those extra taxpayer funds going to private insurers include costs such as advertising and marketing of their plans, costs of contracting for restrictive provider networks, administering prior authorization requirements, complex systems of processing claims including denial of benefits, simple administrative costs of operating large corporate entities, and distributing generous profits to their executives and passive high profiteering by Wall Street investors.
The Medicare for All Act-2026, now filed in Congress, would much better fill our healthcare financing needs without wasting hundreds of billions of dollars on superfluous administrative costs and end immense profiteering by private insurers and Big Pharma. The USA is a country where health insurance for medical and mental healthcare is a function of socioeconomic status. Everyone knows that this inhumane system should have been corrected long ago.
Please tell your legislators that it’s time to end inadequate and dangerous health insurance programs. Insist on real health insurance reform essential for individuals and families. American history is filled with examples of fundamental, democratic change brought about by successful mass action and public pressure against the counseling of the go-slow, vested-interest crowd. No more waiting! Ask your legislators to fully support Medicare For All 2026 now: H.R. 3069 and S. 1506
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